Much at stake with vote

Thursday

Oct 17, 2013 at 12:01 AM

If Stockton is lucky, Bob Benedetti is right.

If Stockton is lucky, Bob Benedetti is right.

Benedetti, a political scientist, professor emeritus at University of the Pacific and an adjunct professorat California State University, Sacramento, believes the two ballot measures city voters are about to decide will pass.

The single-issue ballot will attract fewer voters, he believes, but they will be motivated voters who understand what's at stake.

And what's at stake is this city's ability to make a concerted, long-lasting, multifaceted fight against crime and have money to help buy our way out of bankruptcy.

Measure A would raise the city sales tax by 3/4-cent to 9 percent. Measure B is a non-binding agreement to spend the increased sales tax money - an estimated $28 million the first year - to hire more police and shore up the city's depleted general fund, the city's checkbook account.

Opponents argue city officials can't be trusted, as demonstrated by how they handled prior tax increases. Among the problems with that argument is that "they," as in the current City Council, are not the ones who did things opponents oppose. Earlier councils and earlier city administrators did.

Those actions - giving away the farm in the form of outlandish employee pensions and a building spree supported by an unsustainable housing boom - are the primary actions that sent the city into bankruptcy court.

Measure A is proposed as a way to get us out and fight crime that spiked as the collapse in city revenue forced cuts in the Police Department. Measure B is a conscience-of-the-council vow to do with the money what they say they will do - two-thirds for more cops and one-third to bolster the bankrupt general fund.

Lacking anything else on the ballot, the prediction is that only about 30 percent of the city's 120,416 registered voters will bother to return mail-in ballots or show up at the polls Nov. 5.

Special elections generally attract fewer voters than, say, a presidential election. Those who do show up tend to be the most motivated voters.

Benedetti's argument is in this case, they also will be the most informed voters, residents who understand what's at stake.

Without meaning to be elitist, we can only hope that every vote is cast by an informed voter and that the city receives the 50 percent plus one vote needed to pass these important measures.

If that doesn't happen, the consequences, as outgoing City Manager Bob Deis puts it, will be brutal.